This Will Only Hurt a Little(61)
I scrunched my nose up, confused, “But. I mean, obviously, I can’t play that part because . . .”
“I KNOW! THAT’S THE PROBLEM HERE!”
“Well, is there a way we could talk about me getting this part??”
“I just don’t see that, man. You’re Jungle Julia, through and through. Although, you know, like not.”
I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to even audition for him and left, hoping that he would think of me for something else. When the Harvey Weinstein stuff started to come out and #metoo picked up steam and then of course Uma Thurman made her statement against Harvey and Quentin, I still felt like Quentin was a weirdo, certainly, and very particular, maybe even a bit creepy, but not a bad dude. Plus, I loved his movies! I was horrified by his spitting on actresses and choking them himself for shots, but I thought his response was thoughtful, and Listen! ALL FOR THE ART, RIGHT, MAN? But a few days later, I read an article on Jezebel, which had dug up his Howard Stern interview from 2003 where he defends Roman Polanski’s drugging and raping of a thirteen-year-old. I was ill—actually ill—listening to it. This was ingrained misogynistic behavior, something he believed in deeply. That a thirteen-year-old girl “wanted to have it,” as he laughed and made light of child rape. Even Howard Stern, the original shock jock, seemed shocked. My daughter is ten. I know thirteen-year-olds. I couldn’t help it. I took to Twitter, angrily, as we all do nowadays, and fired off a series of tweets condemning him and his stupid art and anyone who ever works with him. Fuck that guy. You don’t get to exist in this world anymore, dude. But then he DID issue an apology for that interview, which I guess is all he could do. And so he gets to exist for a while longer, I guess. His movie about the Manson murders is about to be filmed. With Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie and other stars. I’m sure it will be mesmerizing. Probably a hit. I’ll skip it.
? ? ?
A few weeks after my birthday, I was on the Pilates reformer with Candi—she was getting her certification to be an instructor and I was getting free Pilates in order to be her guinea pig—when my phone rang.
“Hi, Busy, please hold for Mark and Lorrie.”
Wait. What? I wasn’t up for any jobs. Why were they calling me?
“Hi guys! I’m not up for any jobs, why are you calling me?!”
Lorrie laughed. “Ummm, Biz, why don’t you let me tell you? Apparently John Wells is making good on his word. They want you to come do some episodes of ER.”
A few years earlier, I had auditioned a million times to play a new nurse on ER; the part had ended up being played by my friend Linda Cardellini. In fact, since she and I had the same agents, I knew that for a minute it had looked like her deal wasn’t going to work out and that it would come to me next. But obviously, they worked it out and I was fairly bummed about it, buoyed only by the amazing John Wells reaching out to say that he would find a place for me on one of his shows and that we would work together someday. I guessed, on the Pilates reformer, that day was today. I was offered the part of a new med student named Dr. Hope Bobeck, and I would be joining on a recurring basis, since they liked to try people out to see how they were able to handle the medical jargon and action. I had watched ER with my mom when I was a kid; in fact, I distinctly remember watching the pilot with her. My mother was excited about a show that took place in Chicago and could finally replace Hill Street Blues as her favorite.
My first day on set was in the first episode of season 12. I was excited to work with Linda again and to meet John Stamos, who was joining the cast as a new regular. My very first day I had a trauma scene, in which Mekhi Phifer, Scott Grimes, Goran Visnjic, and I are trying to save someone’s life, walking down a hall with a gurney and yelling out orders at one another. It was a long tracking shot, all done on Steadicam and if one person fucks up, you have to start all over. Keep in mind this is season 12, so most of the cast had been on the show for no less than five years. We did the first take and on my line I froze.
“Fuck! Sorry!!!”
That had never happened to me before but THIS WAS ER. THE ER. Goran was really nice but also fairly intimidating. We went again. This time I got the line, but the medical consultant said I didn’t pronounce one of the words correctly, so we had to go back and do it again. They were about to call action when Goran looked at me over the gurney and said, “You get it right this time, right?”
I didn’t think he was being a dick. He was just telling me that I was either going to get it right on the next take or my days on ER were numbered.
Not only did I nail it, I remember the line to this day, “Succinylcholine as a paralytic and etomidate for sedation.”
I was living in my new house in Hollywood, a house that felt like it had been handed down from actress to actress, because it actually had been. I bought the house from Rachel Bilson, who had bought it from Rose McGowan. I loved my little house, which wasn’t so little, but felt right for me. Marc and I split our nights between our two houses. Mine was much closer to Warner Brothers, so on days I was working, we would stay there. We had started to really talk about getting married, like sooner rather than later, because what would be the point of waiting? But we were having a hard time figuring out what kind of wedding we wanted and where. We had been to a bunch of destination weddings, which were fun but didn’t really feel like us. Marc and Abby had planned to get married at a big wedding venue in downtown L.A., and before they called it off, they had done all of the typical wedding things, like engagement showers and bachelor/bachelorette parties, and he didn’t think he particularly wanted to go through all of that again. Not to mention, we had two houses full of shit already; I didn’t need another mixer.